In the Beginning, God "storied"....

There is a not so commonly known Hebrew word "dabar" that essentially means "God spoke". The early Hebrews understood this word to be more than just the sound of Gods voice, this was God connecting words and phrases with purpose, God making and telling a story, and as Gods story unfolded, He created.

This fascinates me because I had always imagined that when God created the heavens and the Earth, I had imagined God simply uttering the word "light" and light just suddenly appeared. When he created living creatures, and when he created man, I just imagined that he spoke but a word and instantly these things appeared.
Now there is a sense in which this is still true. But what I had overlooked until now was the intentionality and design of Gods creative voice. When God spoke, he was creatively weaving a story together. He was creating not as if by magic, but with thought and design. He was putting a story together with purpose and meaning. Like an artisan creating a fine piece of furniture with a master design and a masterplan, God was meticulous about how he put his piece together, taking care with the timber, choosing only the best materials and with attention to detail, fashioning it carefully into shape. He was like a writer, searching for just the right words, just the right phrase, choosing with deliberation, in order to create the most beautiful story one could imagine. He “storied” the birds and the fish, the grasses and the trees. Everything he created was with design and intentionality. There was careful thought, diligent planning. He spoke, and as he spoke he created, he "storied" the world into existence. In the beginning, God "storied" the heavens and the earth.

This makes me realise that he has “storied” me into existence also. My life is a story within “The Story”. A life created by God deliberately stringing just the right words together, in order to create who I am today, and who I will be tomorrow.
In Psalm 139:14, the Psalmist says “I am fearfully and wonderfully made”
The term in the Hebrew means to be distinct and different. It carries the idea of being set apart from everything else because of its uniqueness.
When God “storied” my life and when God “storied” yours, he created an original. No two stories are the same. “Everyone has their own story”, because it was God who spoke the stories together.
This is “dabar”, and this is how God creates.

A Sojourner and a Romantic...

I am a sojourner and a romantic.
Deep within me there is a home-sickness for another world and a greater love. I wander about in the presence of a holy haunting, a soft whisper of grace that ever draws me towards a horizon of light.
On the horizons edge, I see the silhouette of an enchanted kingdom and somehow I know that its Ruler will cure my sickness and heal my hurt.
On a quiet day, as I look towards that horizon, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for a day, I hear music. The soft echo of a heavenly choir, the distant whisper of voices never yet heard, and just when it begins to fade, there is the sound of the gentle flutter of angels wings.
I am an addict. I have succumbed. I cannot draw back, for with every glimpse of this unearthly realm I am drenched by the Holy Other. His grace sooths my soul and stills my mind. I am touched by His delight.
I am prisoner to this sacred search. This constant vigil for the One who is everything, and everything is within Himself. I cannot let go, I do not know how, for the Holy Other draws me out, to a life beyond myself, to a life far away from the deceitful substance of the now, to the unseen reality of the world that is to come.

Of Lunch and Giftings...

Recently my wife and I went out for lunch with a very good friend of mine. While we were sitting at our table enjoying our meal, two ladies with prams came in and sat at a table behind us. A short while after this, one of the prams fell backwards tipping up the youngster in the pram and throwing bags of shopping onto the floor. In an instant my good friend moved out of his chair and assisted the lady in lifting the pram back up off the floor and setting things straight. At precisely the same moment, my wife who was furthest away from the action, instantly breathed out a compassionate groan and looked intently towards the woman with understanding and sympathy in the hope that they were all okay. I, on the other hand, who had also witnessed exactly the same situation unfold, sat glued to my seat thinking “the pram fell over because there was too much weight in the shopping bags that should have never been hung on the handles of the pram in the first place.!!!”
All three of us faced exactly the same circumstance.... all three of us reacted differently. My good friend, always the servant and ready to help and assist was instantly prepared to serve. My wife, always understanding and ready to empathise with anothers feelings immediately offered sympathetic concern. And me, ever the teacher, sat glued to my seat analysing why things went wrong and thinking of ways to improve the situation.

In 1 Corinthians 12:29, the Apostle Paul writes....”Are all apostles? are all prophets? are all teachers? are all workers of miracles? Have all the gifts of healing? do all speak with tongues? do all interpret?”

It is a rhetorical question and of course the resounding answer is a very loud NO.!!
We are all different. We all have our strengths and we all have our weaknesses. We all have different giftings and we all have different ways of expressing those giftings. Our capacity to excel in what we do is often only limited by our feelings of inadequacy due to the fact that we so readily notice the abilities of others and do not recognise our own. We often wrongly compare our own ability to the ability of another who has an entirely different gifting, and then consider our own strengths to be of no value. The apostle Paul makes it very clear.... we are not all the same... and we should not make these unhelpful comparisons.

Go and be yourself... excel at what you do... do it well... and express joyfully the gifts and the abilities that God has given you.

A wretch like me...

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.

Over the years I have heard this hymn sung in many different ways by a variety of artists, and it is often put to a different tune than the original. This rarely bothers me too much. But what does bother me is when I hear the words of the first line changed to read “who saved someone like me”. The deliberate removal of the word “wretch” I find rather disturbing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the author of these words, John Newton, came to a knowledge of Christ in his late twenties. Prior to this he had been a slave trader in West Africa and was an extremely godless and ruthless man. Not only was he responsible for destroying the lives of hundreds of men, woman and children, but he was also a murderer. At one point in his life he actually kept a black slave as his mistress. When he discovered this slave was having a relationship with a black man, he beat the man to death with his shovel, only to find out later that he was actually her husband. When John Newton finally came to accept Christ and was blown away by the confronting power of Gods grace, he penned the words of this song without the least amount of doubt that he had been a total wretch of a man. The overwhelming power of Gods grace, that had saved him from the person that he was, had no small effect on his life. To change the word “wretch” as was originally penned in this testimony to the power of Gods’ grace, to that of the innocuous term “someone”, does neither justice to the emphasis Newton must have originally intended for this hymn, and neither does it do justice to the meaning of the radical life changing power that is Gods amazing grace.

Grace is by definition one of the most powerful bequests a wretch can receive. When I receive Gods grace, I receive far more than a pardon and far more than mercy. I also receive Gods favour. It is one thing to be forgiven, it is one thing to find mercy, it is one thing to be freed from punishment. But if in exchange for my wretchedness I receive the unmerited favour of God and am elevated to a state of privilege, given the rights of one who is a son, then this is indeed “amazing” grace that only the one who fully comprehends the extent of his wretchedness can understand. This is the truth that Newton had come to realise and it was this thought that motivated him to write “I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see”. When I stand next to Gods grace merely as a “someone” and not as the “wretch” that I truly am, then the magnitude of Gods grace ceases to be amazing, and looks more like a mediocre kind of benevolence. This is neither the kind of Grace that God gives and neither is it the kind of Grace that Newton experienced. It remains therefore in my opinion, that the only way to correctly sing this song is in the spirit of the one who wrote it, and in the spirit of the God who’s grace has been given.... using the words.....“Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

Human Doings... and Human Beings...

Ps 103:7 NIV
“He made known his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel”

This verse says a lot about the way in which we as people tend to relate and interact with God. The verse seems to suggest that for the majority of the nation of Israel, their relationship with God was about the way in which he acted on their behalf. "He showed his deeds to the people of Israel". For them, God was a god of deeds and action. When they were hungry, it was God who brought them food, when they were thirsty, it was God who brought them water. When they were being pursued by their enemies it was God who brought them deliverance.
But the relationship to God that Moses seemed to experience was more about knowing God personally. "He made known his ways to Moses". For Moses, his was a relationship based on a knowledge of Gods ways. A relationship based on intimacy and encounter. Moses wanted to understand who God was and know His mind and heartbeat. The original Hebrew word in the text is the same word used to describe a journey. The relationship Moses enjoyed with God was that of a journey, and a journey involves discovery. At every turn of the pathway there are new experiences to be had. Each new day is different in its’ own unique way. A journey opens us up to fresh encounters. Moses was interested in coming to intimately know the God of the journey.

This says something to me about the difference between a “Human Being” and a “Human Doing”.
“Human Doings” seem to be always looking for fulfillment in what they do. They get involved in as many pursuits as possible, this ministry, that charity, this project, that assignment. Not that there’s anything wrong with all of our doings, it’s just that all too often there is no end to the number of doings a person has to accomplish. No sooner have you completed this project or that undertaking than there is always another right before you screaming out for completion.
"Being", on the other hand, is more about knowing who we are and who we are not, which inevitably leads us to discovering the far more important truth about who God is. When I take time to remind myself that life is as much about “being” as it is about “doing”, I find that I live life in a greater state of rest. It is in “being” that I discover that life is indeed a "God Journey" for which there are new discoveries to be made each day. Life becomes more about encounter than it does about ministry. Life becomes more about relationship than it does about accomplishment.
And the amazing thing is, that almost always when I slow down long enough to “be” in Gods’ presence, it is there that I discover an empowerment that infuses my “doing” with fresh purpose and direction, and it too then becomes inextricably connected to the journey that in its essential form is ultimately all about knowing and experiencing the person of God himself.